


a kissing book

by frostmantle



Series: sagaciously salacious [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: #4 and #7 are the explicit ones the rest of these are varying degrees of spice, F/F, F/M, Flash fics, Is this a kissing book?, birthday present fics, call me zodiark because my thirst consumes worlds, i'm in rarepair ship hell won't you join me, it is indeed a kissing book khloe, my thirst is boundless i'm sORRY, nero: winding up the warrior of light for fun and profit, no beta we just die, prompt fills, requests are open if you have one, sarcasm and a gunblade, tags updated as i go, this man just wants us to step on him, zenos is actually an extra af power bottom and you can't change my mind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:27:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostmantle/pseuds/frostmantle
Summary: Spicy prompt fills, gift fics, and other short things i post here and there. Varying stages of NSFW, please consume responsibly.





	1. sobriquet [Nero tol Scaeva/Warrior of Light]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kissing prompt: 'a kiss meant to seduce'
> 
> (this short could be considered the lead-in to 'a question of lust' but in general i'm not trying too hard to stick to any 'verse for any of these so don't worry overmuch about that)

All told, no one had seemed to be in an agreeable mood on the way down to the Find from the Crystal Tower courtyard, or after they'd arrived. Cid's expression had been positively thunderous, blue eyes dark with his agitation, and the overall feeling from the other Ironworks engineers on site ran the gamut between confusion and suspicious resignation.

Well.  _Almost_ no one. Their sudden interloper seemed quite cheerful about the entire circumstance, as though all of this were going exactly the way he had wanted and they were all just cogs in some machine he'd set in motion.

That idea was absurd, of course; Nero tol Scaeva couldn't have had much more of an inkling of what was behind those doors than anyone else here, surely. But the calm, self-assured way he moved told her he _did_ know something, and more to the point, that he had some plan in mind for it once they’d bypassed all the security for him.

That alone was more than enough to make her wary.

She glanced from side to side, looking for Cid, but he appeared to have quit the Find in a fit of pique (not that she particularly blamed him). The other engineers were just as busy, and G'raha was animatedly chattering to Unei and Doga who were both attempting to answer his flood of questions as best as they could manage.

Everyone seemed to have quite forgotten her presence now that her ability to brute-force the doors to the Labyrinth open was no longer necessary. She wished she could feel even slightly surprised, but that was what she was here for, she supposed. The muscle, the good luck charm.

With a sigh, Aurelia approached Rammbroes' study pavilion and lifted the tent flaps, letting herself inside. If the scholar or one of his fellows -- or better yet, Cid -- was there, she could talk with them, feel out if there was anything that they ought to be concerned about before venturing into the tower should Nero's timely appearance be subterfuge for something sinister...? But the tent was---

\---the tent was _not_ empty, as it had appeared from the outside. A familiar figure turned towards the sound of her entrance, a leather-bound book clasped in one hand.

She immediately reached for her weapon, snapping, "What are you--"

Nero tol Scaeva lifted his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

"Before you cut me down in cold blood, the journal is mine own. I was attempting to compare my notes with that of your associates here."

Aurelia's eyes narrowed but the tribunus only stared back, a look that was both coaxing and challenging at the same time, as if waiting to see what she would do. Finally she relented, tucking her staff back over her shoulder. While it was obvious he'd come in here by himself to rummage through papers, it seemed that he hadn't been here much longer than she had. So it wasn't as though he had had sufficient opportunity to do anything.

Nothing she could _prove_ at the moment, anyroad.

"And the tomestones? I can't imagine you'd want to leave those behind without having a look for yourself."

"They're welcome to them," Nero said with a dismissive shrug.

She blinked. “That was... not the answer I expected.”

"Personal experience from the Ultima Project. The majority of those tomestones will be naught more than particularly expensive paperweights; what useful data exists on them has quite likely been eroded due to time and exposure. As counterintuitive as it may seem, their decision to keep written documentation of the dig may be the wiser course of action."  His pale blue eyes had not tracked away from her face the entire time he had spoken. The gaze he’d leveled upon her was sharp, scrutinizing, intense, and this time she didn't have the benefit of his magitek armor to hide that interest from her sight.

Not that he was bothering to hide it in any way. What game was he playing...?

She broke eye contact, feeling ill at ease as she glanced at the entrance to Rammbroes' tent. She'd backed up against a nearby worktable; heavy and sturdy, it sat just below her waist, at hip height. Perfectly appropriate for a roegadyn sitting down to pen missives or peruse dusty old texts or review Allagan tomestones.

Nero was smiling but he still hadn't said anything, and that made her uncomfortable enough to finally break the silence between them with a defensive "What?"

"Any particular reason you happen to be blushing?"

"Wh- I'm not blushing."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm _not_."

The right corner of his lips tugged slightly upwards, just enough to reveal a flash of canine. She chewed on her lower lip, grasping at the table for a sense of purchase and trying not to think about things she... really should not be thinking about. Really shouldn't. Like how in the seven hells a man was born with a mouth like that. It was- it was  _unfair_.

His answering chuckle made her realize, much to her chagrin, that she had spoken aloud.

He braced his hands against the table's surface and leaned his weight back against it, slotting himself in the open space at her side. Unconsciously, Aurelia shifted herself to put a few ilms of space between them, trying not to think about the difference in height that was somehow far more noticeable now. Nero tol Scaeva was damnably _tall;_ she was average height for a Garlean woman and still barely came up to his shoulders when they stood side by side, let alone in a position like this.

"To that end I've a question for you, eikon-slayer,” he continued smoothly, “if you would be so kind as to indulge me."

"About...?"

"I find it passing strange that a woman who can slay gods without blinking should find my presence in any way disconcerting. An artifact of your upbringing, I assume?" He was baiting her, she knew; the tone of his question was decidedly mocking. But that smile-- that had turned into something speculative and dark. Combined with the intensity of his stare, it set alight a strange, pressurized heat in the pit of her stomach. "Does Garlond elicit this reaction?"

"Cid? Hardly." Aurelia wrenched her gaze away from the movements of his lips to stare over his shoulder at the tent opening. Scholars and Ironworks engineers were passing to and fro just outside; she could see the shadows they cast upon the tarpaulin. "Cid also doesn't stand two ilms away from my face and stare me right in the eyes like he's about to devour me, so take that as you will, I suppose."

" 'Devour' you? What an _interesting_ turn of phrase. Although I must admit you make a salient point. I cannot imagine that you are embarrassed by the slightest of his attentions as you are mine."

Was... was he trying to do what she suspected he was doing? The idea seemed laughable on its face -- Eorzea had no shortage of beautiful women, so who on earth would find _her_ appealing? -- but the problem she currently faced was that it was actually _working_ , damn him. It didn’t help that it had been... she couldn't remember how long since anyone had taken any sort of prurient interest in her, now that she thought about it.

Assuming of course that she wasn't just overthinking this and he wasn't putting her wind up for fun. Either way, she had to put an end to this now before it escalated any further.

"Unfortunately for you, I am not interested.” Calm, collected, and to the point. Yes, she thought; very well done.

She'd hoped that her bluntness would deter him, but that smile only widened, the maw of a hunting predator about to strike.

"Something tells me you are perhaps not being _forthright_ with me." His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. "Shame on you, hero."

"I mean it. I am not interested," she repeated, this time with more resolve. "After what you did in the Prae-"

"Ah, you're concerned that I might turn on you all like a rabid dog, as it were. Worry for Garlond? Thinking I might sabotage his precious Ironworks or somesuch?"

"Not---no, none of those things, not as such, but to say I trust you would be a stretch. Not a word in all these weeks and suddenly you turn up, unannounced, as thought naught had transpired?"

"Your concern is unwarranted. Merely do I find myself with a plethora of free time in the wake of my sudden discharge from military service.”

“You-,” she began, but he was not finished.

“Lest you labor beneath the assumption that I intend you any sort of bodily harm, for a long while before we were... shall we say ‘formally introduced’, I had this recurring dream about you, me, and an interrogation chair-" At the wide flare of her eyes, he paused, only to grin at her: "...Now _that_ , eikon-slayer, is a _very_ interested look."

She tried to scoff at him, but it came out as a short, sharp, nervous bark.

"What look? I didn't give you any _look_."

"You most certainly did."

"You're reading intent where none exists-"

"Am I? Couple that with the fact you're mortified by the slightest hint of insinuation on my part and it's _quite_ telling."

"Scaeva, I was in the legions myself once. Do you _seriously_ think I'd not been exposed to the odd bit of barracks chatter?" She scowled at him. "I'm a chirurgeon by trade. I think I know enough of the human condition not to be easily embarrassed by such things."

There it was--the look she'd seen him pass Cid every time he was wont to needle the man in the space of a single conversation, coupled with the upwards arch of one eyebrow. She’d not realized how _aggravating_  it was to be on the receiving end of that look until this moment, now that _she_ was the subject of Nero's condescension. 

"I'd wager that what you believe passes for 'barracks chatter' is overwhelmingly tame. You've not heard the half of it, I assure you. Even the worst among the rank and file will behave themselves around a skirt, especially if the lady in question is a pureblood."

"Perhaps if the lady had seen no military service. I imagine there is precious little they could say that would shock me."

He pushed himself upright and turned to face her, bracing his hands on either side and giving her precious little in the way of an escape route. 

“I am _very_ willing to test your hypothesis."

"I'm sure you are.” She kept her voice steady with some considerable effort. His mouth now lingered but a bare hairsbreadth apart from her own, and trying not to think about that fact was only causing her to hyperfocus on it.

"No time like the present,” he said, “and I _am_ a man of science. Call it professional curiosity, if you like. May I?"

He'd called her bluff, and after her own assertion she felt she had little choice but to accept the consequences. At last Aurelia nodded, stiffly, trying to ignore the faintly triumphant curl to his answering smile.

His hand cupped her jaw, warm and callused fingertips trailing the shell of her ear, palm just barely cradling the soft skin over her throat. If he wished he could close his grip and tighten it, squeeze until she had no air to breathe- but the Echo would have warned her of any killing intent. Although it gave her no indication of any danger from him, it took a conscious effort not to bolt under his arm and flee the tent. Tension thrummed through her frame like a live wire.

Nero leaned inward until they were cheek to cheek. Her breath hitched for the briefest of moments when she felt the light scrape of stubble and caught his scent: some kind of aftershave perhaps, a bit stringent but not unpleasant, and the heat in her belly clenched tight. Lips lingered at her ear and she could feel the tribunus' warm breath fanning very lightly across her skin.

Then he began to speak.

 _Sotto voce_ , in their native Garlean tongue. A soft, soporific rumble, breath just slightly uneven- and _not_ the mildly suggestive banter or off-color jokes she’d expected but a soldier's words of coupling, rough and lascivious and filthy.

All of it aimed at her. 

Her grip on the table tightened as she willed herself to remain still through the impulse to slap him or shove him away in shocked mortification, as he well knew a proper young lady of gentle birth would have been expected to do. He knew, too; could sense her dismay, how much it cost her just to maintain some semblance of composure, and he wasn't fooled by it.

He was _laughing_ at her, the bastard: she could hear the soft, breathy chuckles woven through his unending stream of vulgarities. Her face felt as though he had set it afire and she knew she was probably bright red right down to the roots of her hair---and then she felt the press of his mouth, a light kiss along the juncture of her jaw just beneath the earlobe.

A hot shudder of anticipation warped its way down her spine.

"So the eikon-slayer is undone by a bit of bawdy talk after all." He had not moved his lips away from her skin before speaking. She could feel the heat of his breath against her, warm and velvet and damp and gods, he was practically _purring_ in her ear- "It would appear your theory has been disproven, _hero_."

She found herself unable to respond, mouth feeling suddenly very dry, swallowing with some effort. The clicking sound her throat made in her ears as she did was so, so loud.

And before she had quite managed to gather her wits again, Nero tol Scaeva straightened his posture and backed away from her position against the table with a mocking bow before tucking the journal in his coat pocket and strolling towards the tent flap. Turning his back on her, quite deliberately, and making his exit.

As though the entire exchange had never occurred.

She let out the exhalation she hadn't realized she was holding, sagging back against the sturdy oak surface of Rammbroes’ makeshift writing desk and attempting to ease her breathing into something resembling an even pace. He'd left her rattled and flustered and... _burning_. There was a deep, aching knot of tension that had formed in the base of her belly, one that would not fade quickly.

And she suspected that like as not, he’d only done it to prove a point, namely that his wits were malms beyond hers and her victory in the Praetorium had been but a simple fluke, a stroke of blind luck.

Small wonder Cid's hackles had been raised by his mere presence. Hells take him, the man was utterly _insufferable_.

After some time had passed (and the heat in her cheeks had faded), she slipped out of Rammbroes' "study" and saddled her chocobo. She had to talk to Cid about this, she decided, regardless of how sour his mood might be. Someone was going to have to keep an eye on Nero once they set foot in the tower, and given everyone else’s relative importance in the grand scheme of things, it might as well be her; she could endure his baiting so long as she made sure they had an understanding.

Aurelia didn’t see any sign of him on her way out of the camp. Doubtlessly he’d gone in search of someone or something else to act as his temporary source of entertainment until the expedition into the Tower was underway, she thought. She could not well decide if she was disappointed or relieved. 

But if he planned to behave this way the entire time, it was going to be a very, very long expedition indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me committing garlean lust crimes and other acts against common eorzean decency here: http://frostmantle.tumblr.com


	2. home [f!WoL x f!WoL]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kissing prompt: 'early morning kisses'
> 
> (NSFW. Very short birthday gift for my irl partner)

J'lantaa Suhzu had awakened in a fair number of beds over the past few years. The life of an adventurer meant one's feet were always on the road, eyes forward to the next job, the next request, the next town over the horizon--but it also meant few chances to breathe, to think much of anything beyond where the next bag of gil would come from. It was a life she'd accepted long ago, but she treasured those days of quiet, lazy solitude all the more for their rarity. They were precious.

Mid-morning sunlight filtered through gauzy curtains, warming the bed and dappling the dark-scaled flesh of its other occupant. She still slept, breathing soft and regular, her bare chest rising and falling in a slow rhythm that did nothing to distract the Miqo'te's fond gaze from lingering over the slim figure. Her wife was often wont to use fantasia to change her appearance, but no matter what face she wore it was always the same sweet girl with the wide violet eyes and shy smile, arms open to welcome her. Avelina was her home as much as this small cottage and the bed they shared.

J'lantaa smiled and leaned back on one elbow, tracing her fingertips over one shoulder, the places where scale met flesh, grazing the curvature of one breast until her palm rested upon a smooth and slightly concave expanse of belly, just below her sternum. Avelina sighed softly and adjusted a little, but otherwise did not move.

She pressed her lips to the joining of shoulder and collarbone, leaving the barest touch against her wife's skin with the tip of her tongue, just enough to linger--and was rewarded with a soft noise above her head. Grinning mischievously, the dragoon leaned forward and closed her mouth around a taut nipple, curling her tongue about its stiffness and suckling gently: the longest kiss of all.

Fingers threaded into her hair and J'lantaa knew Avelina was most definitely not asleep any longer. Slowly she released the suction, lifting her head in time for her wife to capture her mouth in a fierce kiss that stole the breath from her, a kiss that faded into myriad small touches of her lips until they both had to come up for air. J'lantaa blinked a few times, feeling somewhat lightheaded and kiss-drunk as the white mage sat up to face her.

"Good morning, Lana," she said, yawning, as if she'd just opened her eyes seconds ago.

J'lantaa knew better than to play at coyness, however. With a soft, rumbling laugh, she wrapped her tail around Avelina's waist.

"Morning. Thought I'd wake you up so we could have some breakfast?"

Avelina gave her a chaste little peck on the cheek and then wrapped her arms around the Miqo'te's shoulders, tilting her weight forward so they both fell back against the pillows with Avelina straddling J'lantaa's waist. Her violet eyes were bright with a hunger that had nothing to do with breaking one's fast.

"We _could_ ," the Xaela said archly, "but you seem to have something different in mind."

"I've no idea what you're talking about," J'lantaa said, but she heard the breathless catch in her own voice at the same moment Avelina did and allowed herself a sheepish smile. "...Well, maybe  _some_ idea."

Those smooth, deft healer's hands were already exploring J'lantaa's dusky skin, sliding beneath her smalls to cup her breasts, and Avelina's mouth pressed against J'lantaa's as she rolled her hips with a deliberate and tantalizing laziness to grind against one of her thighs. Eagerly the dragoon returned her ardor, her own hands drifting downwards, and her wife deepened their kiss with a low, trembling moan in the back of her throat.

Breakfast, she decided, could wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me committing garlean lust crimes and other acts against common eorzean decency here: http://frostmantle.tumblr.com


	3. throne (Zenos yae Galvus/nameless f!Warrior of Light)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt fill: "heated kiss"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short and sweet warmup piece while working on something longer. flash fic prompt fill, in which i literally cannot see zenos as anything but hydaelyn's most ridiculously bratty power bottom. 
> 
> i didn't assign a named wol here so it's w/e. not explicit, but spicy enough not to read at work.

 

He’s seen the centuries-old throne countless times, but never from this angle.

Even the mightiest of hunters can be humbled if enough power is brought to bear, and it is on his knees, divested of arms and armor alike, that Zenos yae Galvus is left to stare at the mosaic glass decorating the ascending steps for a seat of barbarian kings. How many endless days and nights, he muses, has he spent striding towards that selfsame chair with a bored and insouciant arrogance?

Going through the motions while his blood sings for a chase?

A sharp and ungentle tug on the lead attached to the heavy torc that braces his throat. Zenos rasps out a pained cough as he falls forward, allowing himself to be taken off his feet.

He manages to catch himself, bracing his weight on sword-callused palms before his head can strike stone. Cornflower-blue eyes study the interlocking geometric patterns of terracotta tiling, interspersed with filaments of his own hair, partially shielding his face from sight like a golden curtain.

The Garlean prince does not move when bid, and is rewarded with a punishment. Stone scrapes against his skin as he is dragged by his captors across the rough heat of the tiles, and he is forced to crawl up each narrow step and onto the dais, and when he lifts his gaze it is to see that he has been brought before  _her_.

She lounges in the massive seat, her expression cool and neutral, the most beautiful apex predator he has ever seen.

He replays their last great duel in his mind’s eye, the memory as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Shinryu’s aether merging with his own. His crash back to the Menagerie garden like a falling star arcing down into the atmosphere from its apogee– the last time he can remember feeling such pure and feral joy.

“Leave us,” she says. The lead goes slack as footsteps retreat. There is the sound of doors swinging open, and falling shut, and a cold silence as they are left alone at last. 

The so-called Warrior of Light, eikon-slayer,  _empress of beasts_ , looks down upon him as if both do not know that his proximity to the most powerful armies on this star hang upon his father’s weakest breath. “I am not so stupid as to think you did not allow yourself to be captured, much less in such a provocative fashion. What do you here, princeling?”

“I have come to  _negotiate_.”

One of those delicate brows arches upwards. There is a rustle of silk as she stands, approaches, picks up the lead that was left to fall, and slowly pulls him forward by the slender, rattling chain. As if _he_ is the conquered supplicant come to offer surrender, and she the legatus awaiting tribute.

The thought brings in its wake a burning excitement that rides down his spine and spears straight into his aching groin.

“And what, pray,” she murmurs, the husky softness of her voice making him  _twitch_ , “are your terms, Zenos yae Galvus?”

“You need have no worries for your associates. There is no sport to be had in crushing savages.” He grins, not a true smile but a manic rictus, a flash of bright white teeth, eyes glittering and feverish. Sweat and spittle drip from his chin. “Merely would I continue my hunt.”

“I see.”

He is reaching for her, wrapping his arms about her thighs, pulling her close until his cheek is pressed against the soft, plush expanse of skin between navel and mons. She humors him for the briefest of moments, and he feels the warm weight of her palm on the back of his head, running very lightly through his wheat-blond locks.

Then her hand tightens into a fist and hauls him upwards. Pain arcs down his neck and arms like lightning aether between metal rods, before she kisses him, not soft at all but angry and hot and punishing.

“If you would have your  _hunt_ ,” she hisses against his mouth, “then prove the game worth my time.”


	4. in flagrante delicto [Nero tol Scaeva/Warrior of Light]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'in flagrante delicto,' adv. - (latin, colloq.) caught in the midst of sexual activity.

They were shadows amongst shadows cast by the intermittent flicker of ceruleum flourescents, back to chest to wall, his slender but still much larger frame barricading her points of exit. Her heart threatened to hammer itself straight out of her ribcage. Indigo-blue eyes flickered from his face to the double pane of tempered glass by the door, the only thing separating them from the outer corridor. 

 _"Scaeva,"_ she hissed, "if someone comes in here right now-"

"And what, precisely, are they going to do? Call the viceroy?"

She could muster naught in response save a choked attempt at a laugh. This small room - little more than a closet - was not what one would have called secured from prying eyes. It would take only a sidewise glance from some sentry, one bored and listless investigation to yield unexpected fruit. 

Still she hesitated, and at last a light and mocking sigh escaped his lips. 

"Very well, eikon-slayer; if you fear discovery so very much-"

The length of her robes were gathered in one deft hand and lifted, the finely woven fabric tossed with a calculated artlessness to expose her from the flaring curve of that nearby hip to the deceptively delicate taper of her ankle. Gooseflesh prickled where her skin met cold and sterile air. She inhaled sharply, heat and tension coiled tight in her - whether from anxiety or anticipation, she could not have said.

"-then we shall have to practice due caution. Quietly, and at _my_  leisure." 

Calloused fingertips traced the smooth expanse of thigh where flesh met the border of stocking, and every last one of her mental faculties seemed to grind to a halt.

"How long will you last, I wonder," all of her damned focus was on those _hands_  and the levin heat that now followed the pathways he'd traced, static arcing across an opened circuit, "before I break that _composure_  for which you're so famous?"

Slipped nigh seamlessly beneath her smallclothes, his palms had found her hips and the softness of her thighs. They lingered for a moment, a light and appreciative caress, before sliding very gently over the soft and yielding expanse of her lower belly.

The utterance of his name was a plea, a frantic whimper that broke from her lips almost against her will and he let out his own breath in a sharp hiss to hear it: one he muffled in the golden curtain of her hair. His free hand parted those curls so that he could press his mouth against her nape and she bit back a tiny whimper when his teeth grazed her, her legs shifting restlessly, heat and aching coiling tight, _gods_ - 

-and his thumb slipped downwards, traversing paths of velvet-soft skin and wiry gold curls, to find her already slick and oversensitive.

Her hips bucked and she leaned into the wall with a keening whine captured between teeth tightly clenched, cheek pressed against the cold steel wall. Her fingernails dragged across its smooth and polished surface, rendered useless. 

He wasn't unaffected in the slightest. She knew it; she could hear his excitement in the soft and uneven whisper of his breath as he touched her, feel it in the heat and heaviness pressing into the cleft of her buttocks with each rolling motion- but he made no move to take his own pleasure. He knew what he was about, knew what he wanted from her, and to that end he was methodical and measured and utterly relentless.

Everything she was had ceased to exist. Her power, her Blessing, her mission, all of it, gone. Her very heartbeat seemed to hang upon that easy and torturous rhythm traced between her legs until her own breaths shuddered harsh and ragged from her lungs.

Enfolded in the cradle of the arms that braced her, she writhed in blind desperation, trying to force him to increase his pace. She found her best efforts resisted. Heat and pressure ratcheted up by ilms over minutes that passed as moons, until all that mattered was pursuit of the release that hovered so frustratingly close, the release he wouldn't grant. 

Not until his lips traced the shell of her ear and lingered there, and she heard his command uttered in a voice thick and rough with lust, feral and rasping, _"Beg me,"_   and by then she had lost all care for her dignity.

So she did.

 

 

==

(a special thanks to the fine folks of the [J&T discord](https://discord.gg/4m3ZeZ) who are the best enablers a girl could have really)


	5. balestra (Haurchefant Greystone/Warrior of Light)

There was a startled exclamation from the sparring yard, followed by a metallic crash as the young man’s rear end met the icy stones. The training blade had flown from his grasp in his surprise, his fellows hastily dodging out of the way as it flew through the air. 

The simple sword hit the ground with a loud clatter and drifted a good few fulms across the thin ice before coming to a slow halt on the edge of the yard, where it spun in lazy and useless circles. 

His opponent calmly crossed the yard, knelt to pick up the blade, then tossed it at his feet.

“You’ll not get past an aevis if you can’t break the guard of a conjurer.” She lifted the plain wooden cane she bore in one hand and shook the snow out of her hair with the other before tossing her locks over one shoulder. “Again, ser Knight!”

Grinning like a boy on Starlight morning, Haurchefant Greystone stood at the threshold of the keep entrance to watch the sparring as it continued apace, heedless of the snow blowing through the door to melt upon contact with the much warmer flagstones of the hall (though presently a less-than-gentle push from Corentiaux sent him out the door where it was immediately shut at his back) as he watched the Warrior of Light put his men through their paces. 

Many adventurers, highborn and lowborn alike, had made their way through the camp on their journeys elsewhere (and a handful into his bed every now and again, truth be told), but he was hard-pressed to remember the last time he had met someone like Aurelia Laskaris. He still remembered the day she had first swept through the door to his hall and into his life: snow clinging to tawny lashes and the silken fall of long honey-blonde waves, her sleek and athletic frame draped in traveling clothes wholly unsuited to the cold climate. 

She had learned her lessons well since then, and today she had come to Coerthas from Mor Dhona prepared for its eternal winter. Her cheeks were just as rosy from the cold air, her long golden hair with its shimmer of snow just as ethereal, and she seemed somehow even more radiant and lovely than she had that day she’d come knocking with Francel’s letter. Haurchefant smiled at the sound of her soft laugh ringing across the stones - neither haughty nor mocking, but one of genuine joy. 

It pleased him to know she was enjoying herself. Her laugh was a rare gift.

After perhaps another bell of watching his recruits dispatched rather neatly and quickly by a slip of a girl in conjurer’s robes, their drill leader had had enough of the secondhand embarrassment and called for his charges to come to attention. They did so, shamefaced and somewhat the worse for wear- though a few were openly grinning at the prospect of being able to brag that they’d crossed blades with the Warrior of Light.

Haurchefant sauntered into the training yard, clapping slowly, beaming at her as though she’d just pulled the sun from the sky to give him as a gift.

“Splendid,” he gushed as she turned to acknowledge him, that soft smile still on her face. “Absolutely _splendid!_ I had no doubt you would emerge the victor. I appreciate your aid, my friend.”

“Not too much of a loss of face to have had their weaknesses exposed, I trust?”

“Not at all! Though I daresay old Auvreaux might be eating a touch of crow for a sennight or so.” He flashed her a bright, cheeky grin. “…What say you to a match with _me_ , fair lady? Live blades; that is, my sword against your magicks. I would love to see what you have learned on your adventures since last we met.”

Her smile turned decidedly challenging. 

“First blood only, I pray you, Lord Haurchefant. I should hate to deprive Dragonhead of a fine and capable garrison commander.”

He laughed, knowing she would not truly harm him. “First blood, then.”

“And to the victor?”

“To the victor-” his own grin flashed feral, “a single favor of their choosing.”

Something unreadable passed across the deep blue field of her eyes and was gone as soon as it had come, but her smile hadn’t slipped.

“Very well. A favor of their choosing, then.” She braced her right foot to bear her weight on its heel and lifted her staff once more. “Have at you, my lord.”

He drew his sword and swept the straps of his shield about onto his left arm, the blade flashing in the cold and brittle sunlight. 

In an instant she was upon him, besetting his defenses with rock and wind and the sharp burn of holy light. Haurchefant loved to watch her fight; he would never have expected a conjurer to be so fierce, and yet she was, commanding the least spirits of the land’s elements to harry him. 

It was all the Elezen could do to mount a defense, at least until he was able to exploit the one weakness he knew most casters possessed: he broke her concentration. She was able to block his swipes easily, but the last salvo chipped a small splinter of wood from her cane, and upon his next strike he heard her curse and shake out her fingers. A thin line of crimson had welled in the space between the tip of her index finger and its nail bed.

“I yield, good ser knight,” Aurelia said, wincing. She immediately stuck the wounded finger in her mouth and added, her words slightly muffled: “You have officially drawn first blood. Rather an unseemly showing from me, I’m afraid.”

Haurchefant laughed. She drew the small bit of wood out from beneath her fingernail with her teeth and spat it into the snow along with a few droplets of blood.

“Seven hells,” the Garlean grumbled. “Brought low by a _splinter_ of all things.” 

“I shan’t regale the hall with the tale of the Warrior of Light’s ignominious defeat at the hands of her own staff, I promise.”

She laughed again, grinning around the finger still in her mouth. “A most gracious concession, my lord. Thank you.”

“Although,” he said, still smiling, “I am owed my favor.”

He had drawn closer to her as he spoke and now they stood the barest few ilms apart, enough so that silver could have blended with gold did he wish to tilt his chin down just… a fraction. 

Just enough to kiss her, for example.

His crystalline gaze locked with hers, and without breaking line of sight he reached into his belt and produced from one of the pouches a rather rumpled and well-used handkerchief. It bore his initials and had the heraldry of House Fortemps emblazoned upon it in scarlet-threaded embroidery. 

Haurchefant kept it on his person at all times, and well he should have done: it was a small gift from his father when he’d earned his spurs. _A token for your lady,_ Father had said, and yet he had kept it, never inclined to meet a lady to whom he would gift it, until now.

Before Aurelia could move he had gently enfolded her smarting hand in his, and had wrapped the cloth about her cold fingers.

“To staunch the wound, my friend,” he explained, his voice little more than a husky murmur.

The heat in her eyes took him aback. 

“….I had thought, my lord, that you wished for a favor of your choosing.” She took a soft, shaking breath. “As- as a prize for your victory.”

“My prize is your continued good health and well-being in all things, dear lady.” That was, in truth, the very least and most _innocent_ of his hopes, though he dared not speak that desire aloud. “Truly, your friendship alone is enough fav-”

She had pulled her other glove from her hands with her teeth and was tracing the outline of his jaw with her fingers. The pearlescent third eye on her brow shimmered in the afternoon sun like light refracting upon snow crystals.

The Ishgardian stood very still, almost not daring to hope that one of his most closely guarded daydreams was… actually taking place. Those soft eyes, bright with interest, had not yet left his: calm and solemn and the most beautiful shade of indigo blue he had ever seen.

He didn’t want her to stop looking at him like that. Not now. Not ever.

She leaned towards him, closing the rest of the distance between them, and he felt the softest brush of her lips over his. When he did not move, she did it again. And again, and again, until the individual sensations ran together into a single caress, the heat of their breath mingling in visible clouds between them as she continued to kiss him.

Somewhere it occurred to him that perhaps he should stop her, make sure this was truly what she wanted. 

His hands found her shoulders (thankfully), then her cheeks, and he was able to pull her away enough to catch his breath. She, too, was breathing heavily, and he suspected the flush of her cheeks now had little to do with the chill in the air.

“My friend,” he managed, tucking a sheaf of gold somewhat clumsily behind her ear with a gloved finger. “I’m sorry, but are you quite sure that this is what you-”

He never finished the sentence. It was swallowed by a deeper and far more intimate press of that soft, warm mouth, coaxing his own open to receive her, and those strong and capable arms entwined about his neck-

-and _by the Blessed Fury_ , Haurchefant Greystone thought, he had never been happier to win a sparring match on a technicality in his entire life.

 


	6. pomegranate [Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "a stolen kiss"

“Emet-Selch.”

She drew in a soft and shaking breath. 

“That, I think,” she said, “is not your name. You have another.”

White, and gold, and black. 

Aurelia stared at him, the planes of his face illuminated by the flowers’ phosphorescence, eyes caught on that single snowy forelock that always brushed over his brow, and wondered how she had not seen before. She had been too raw, she thought. Too raw, too angry, too exhausted to see aught past the facade he presented to her. His myriad barbs. His world-weary slouch. The cold and flat cadence of his drawled monologues.

He beheld her with lambent golden eyes like twin watchtowers: lighthouses in the dark of a roiling sea, casting water-light upon the path of her recall. 

“I wish,” her hand lifted, fell upon the fur-trimmed lapel of his coat, unnatural whiteness shimmering fitfully at the periphery of her vision as it had done without cease since her defeat of the lightwarden, “that I could remember it.”

One silk-gloved fist clenched at his side, and he released one of his long-suffering sighs. His expression did not change but some facet of his eyes had shifted. Some small glint of light that had not been there before, like sunlight slanting through a window at the barest hint of a lowered angle. Her fingers curled, fisting in his coat, and she tried to remember what breathing felt like. 

Suddenly she wished he  _would_ say something.

“The night that I… died, I-”

“I remember.” His voice, no longer its affected drawl but a soft and haunted velvet rasp. Fist unclenched. “I have never forgotten.”

“I meant what I said.”

“There is no  _saving_ me, hero,” he sneered. “Best you reserve your savior complex for these fragments you so dearly prefer.”

Aurelia’s eyes held his, dark blue against liquid gold.

Her hand remained where it was, pulling against his coat, knowing the gesture was meaningless. Did he wish to leave, she knew she could not stop him, knew he had only to snap his fingers and bend the laws of reality. He did not. “I want to remember,” she said simply. “To cast off whatever it is that keeps me from it.”

“Your memory is incomplete because  _you_ are incomplete. What would you have me do about it? Another  _story_ , perhaps?”

She almost released him, almost let him leave her standing there alone in the clearing. It would have been easy to turn her back on him and step away and leave him to his own devices: lost within the annals of whatever private torment he still harbored after all his countless years of existence. Ascian against Chosen. Villain against hero, light against darkness. Eternal adversaries. 

Instead, she reached out to him- ignored the silent plea to let him have his defenses. She cupped her palm along the curve of his jaw, a gentling and conciliatory touch. 

Emet-Selch stilled himself in a way that she recognized and understood all too well. Wary and wanting, ready to strike if the need arose to protect himself but desperate beneath his brittle and scornful veneer for even the smallest scrap of unguarded affection. One of his hands lifted to wrap about the fist in his furred coat and she thought he meant to tug it away, but he idly ran his thumb about her inner wrist: an echo of that feather-light line she had stroked along his cheekbone. 

Light and gold, wreathed in darkness. 

As he had ever been.

“No stories,” she said, very softly. “If you could show me-”

He whispered something. It was a name, she realized: one she didn’t recognize, but a name which resonated within some forgotten part of herself. The surprise of it distracted her from his movements; he had released her only to frame her cheeks with both hands, palms resting at her temples, long fingers threading through the golden strands of her hair. Warmth radiated through the silk, and his touch was careful, reverent. 

It stole the breath from her lungs almost as surely as the mouth that pressed carefully against hers in the next heartbeat: slow, soft, with a familiarity that shocked the senses.

 _Oh no,_  a small part of her cried out in alarm.  _Oh no, oh stop, you shouldn’t let him do this, you shouldn’t let him do this, you shouldn’t-_

Emet-Selch’s kiss was  _terrifying_. It made her feel weightless and unanchored, like that sensation of free-fall she’d had in the Rift- somehow obliterating her conscious self. She forgot she was the Warrior of Light, forgot he was an Ascian. Forgot they stood in the last gasping vestige of a dying world that he meant to destroy by fair means or foul. Forgot why she was in the First at all.

The farther time seemed to stretch onward, the softer his kisses became, the more reluctant she was to stop him. 

It was a death of sorts, administered through the most tender touch imaginable. 

With more effort than she would have dared admit to anyone, perhaps even herself, Aurelia broke their embrace and wrenched herself away from him. She stood with one hand pressed over Zenos’ scar, staring wide-eyed and shaken at some fixed point beyond his shoulder. 

Kiss-drunk, lips swollen and wet and stained a deep coral, she found herself unable to look him in the eyes. Another few minutes and Emet-Selch would have made of the azure flowers of Yx'Maja a lovers’ bed. Laid her down and laid her bare, unwrapped all that she was, small and frightened and lonely (and  _mortal_ ), and then he would have made love to her until it broke them both. 

And she knew, at her core, that she would have let him, and she would have regretted it. She didn’t want this from him. His yearning was not hers to accept whether he laid it at her feet or not. 

It belonged to a woman who was long years in her grave. 

Her other hand still rested upon his lapel, and beneath it she felt the stiffening of his frame, at the realization that she had rejected him. Those bright eyes paled, shuttered once again like a door slamming shut in her face. 

“The others-”

“Ah, yes,” acid on his tongue as he crossed his arms, posture closed and defensive as ever, “I suppose you should be getting back to your entourage. Can’t have your friends thinking you’ve slipped your leash, now, can we?”

She said nothing. Though his expression was as icy and bored as ever, Emet-Selch could not hide his eyes from her, nor the truth that lay within them. She could see the helpless bitterness within the gold as his gaze tracked the shape of her face: the conflict between old hatred and desperate love, nurtured for untold years, entwined like ivy and oak, root and parasite. 

How fine the borderlands of those emotions, she thought: how easily one could cross a threshold betwixt one and the other. And now that she had opened the floodgate between them, there would be no shutting it. She could feel the tattered edges of Emet-Selch’s soul as surely as the Ascian must feel her own, and his unfettered emotions left her feeling scraped raw. Drained. Exhausted. She would avoid him, she knew, for weeks henceforth- as he would likewise avoid her. 

The moment had come, it had passed, and it had gone. It did not seem likely to return. She wasn’t certain whether to find that a disappointment or a relief.

Without a glance over her shoulder, Aurelia forced herself to quit the clearing. As he had said, the others would have marked her departure.


	7. absolution [Nero tol Scaeva/Warrior of Light]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thought you'd said I wasn't *deserving.*"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is an extended scene of the prompt response "forgiven" which was submitted for the ffxivwrite 2019 challenge in September. context isn't... *super* necessary since this is 100% smut i finally decided to clean up and yeet onto the void that is my tumblr, but if you want what passes for plot then i suggest you read the first part here -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/20493314/chapters/48832997

 

She grinned. “Consider yourself forgiven, then.”

When his teeth nipped her collarbone hard enough she knew there’d be a visible mark the next morning it turned her laugh into a breathless and wanting thing.

“Thought you’d said I wasn’t  _deserving_ ,” he murmured against her neck. She unfastened one of the buttons on his undershirt, and another, then slipped her hand beneath the loosened fabric and covered the terrain of bare shoulder and collarbone. Gooseflesh rippled to life beneath her fingers when she ran her nails very lightly along the column of his neck, and Nero muttered a soft oath between clenched teeth. 

“Well,” she said, worrying the last button of his undershirt open to continue her exploration, “you  _did_ ask me for a second chance, after all." 

The rhythm of rise and fall beneath her touch had become erratic, the quiet breaths near her ears audibly uneven. She traced lean ridges of muscle and bone and not a few old battle scars, fingertips trailing upwards through the wiry golden hairs that lightly furred his chest, then following the same path in reverse towards the indent of his navel. 

Her touch faltered when his fingers slipped under the waistband of her smalls to trace along her flanks in a light and feathery caress. Rather than move towards the apex of her thighs as she had expected, his palms stilled in place as though invisible hands had gripped his wrists, and Aurelia found herself subjected to a long and careful scrutiny that, as it stretched into silence, became something approaching uncomfortable.

"What’s the matter?” she murmured, brushing a stray curl out of his eyes. There was the sense of a pause before he withdrew his touch- only to move elsewhere. She took in a shallow and shaking whisper of breath when his palms settled instead over her bared breasts. “Nero, what-”

“If you’d prefer that we not…" 

He trailed off midsentence, the ball of one thumb rolling idly back and forth over her nipple in a small and almost absentminded stroke while he seemed to consider his next words. The warmth that stole through her limbs in its wake was not an unwelcome distraction precisely, though it _did_ make the wait to hear him out somewhat taxing.

She kept her own breathing measured and focused her attention on his face. The expression he wore reminded her very much of their conversation back at the Reach after Zenos’ attack: that selfsame uncertainty, lurking like a shadow of doubt beneath his desire. 

"You should know that this was not my intent when I sought you out,” he said finally. “I meant to share a bottle of wine and conversation. Naught else.”

… A rare sight indeed, to see a man like Nero Scaeva at a loss for words. Aurelia supposed she couldn’t really fault him for his concern, all things considered- although at this precise moment in time she wasn’t certain she would have cared even if he  _had_ stolen that bottle of Viandja and joined her with ulterior motives in mind. 

She twined her arms about his neck and arched her back to grind herself against him, hard and slow. Her arousal had become a nagging ache, an itch she couldn’t scratch, and she felt as much as heard the catch in his throat.

“Of course it wasn’t your intent,” said the Warrior of Light. “It’s  _mine_. I’m seducing you.”

The worried crease smoothed from his brow and the smile that replaced it made everything below her waist clench - whether in alarm or anticipation, she could not have said at that moment. “ _Are_ you?"  

There was  _something_ in the way Nero said those two words that made her skin prickle in warning, but she forged onward. 

Full speed ahead, damn the consequences. She wanted what she wanted.

"I am. And it occurs to me,” her palms flattened against his tensed stomach and slid beneath the waistband of the breeches and smalls he still wore, “that  _you_ are still wearing far too much clothing to properly participate in this endeavor.”

She ran her hand slowly down the hot and rigid length of him, felt the wet at his tip, felt the twitch of his shaft beneath her palm. The  _sound_ that came out of his mouth when she touched him made that momentary boldness more than worth it. 

It was also the only warning she received before she found herself tumbled onto her back and pinned against the ground beneath his larger frame, breath stolen in a fierce kiss. In a single swift movement her (quite damp) smalls were at her knees, then her ankles. As she kicked them away she watched him impatiently yank his undershirt over his back, then work himself out of his loosened breeches to toss after her discarded underthings. 

He returned to her in short order: warm sweat-dampened skin and heavy breathing, lean muscle and wiry angles point to point against her own softness. His hands found her hips, slid over her thighs, and when they cupped her knees her legs parted like water. His mouth claimed hers, soft and coaxing; at the same time she felt one finger at her entrance, then two, sliding home with unfailing precision. She sighed and let her weight fall gently into the grass as her hips twitched upwards to rock against his hand, and registered in a distant sort of way the small and helpless whimpers that escaped her lips.  

_Twelve above-_

Her back arched in her efforts to meet those shallow thrusts- and it wasn’t  _enough_. The digits that pistoned inside her, the heel of his palm buttressed up against her core to stoke the fire in her veins with each rocking motion- it somehow only served to fan the flames. 

She needed more.

“Please,” she panted. His lips stretched into a slow and delighted smirk. 

“Please  _what_?”

“You  _know_ what.”

“Hm. Do I? I’m afraid I find myself at a loss.  _Enlighten_ me, pray,” he drawled against her gasping mouth, slowing the movements of his fingers inside her to a teasing pace best described as torturous, “o  _seductress_ mine.”

Almost in an instant, the breadth of her focus reduced itself to naught save that frantic corona of intensity he’d created with his touch. She could have screamed aloud, for she was well aware he knew what he was about, and he had to be in a similar state: she could feel his cock, fully erect, pulsing against the soft skin of her inner thighs. Could hear the uneven and ragged cadence of his breathing, see the deep rosy flush of his skin. She knew _exactly_ how badly he wanted her. 

But she realized now that, unwittingly, she had challenged Nero to a contest of wills: one he was determined to win. 

Of all the times for his godsdamned  _competitive streak_  to manifest-

“Nero, for the love of the  _Twelve_ -" 

"Invoking _false gods_ , sweetling? Goodness, _whatever_ will the neighbors think?”

“ _Sod_ the bleeding neighbors and  _fuck me_ ,” her legs flexed about his waist, “ _you insufferable thrice-damned **bastard** -”_

“I shall have you know I was  _quite_ legitimate,” Nero began, but whatever else he had been about to add trailed off into a groan and the rhythm of the hand between her legs faltered when her hand found purchase about his shaft, a gesture she had intended to distract.

His fingers slipped from her entirely as she continued to touch and tease, only for his hand to close about hers - wrapped around him as it still was - and guide downwards until he had settled at her entrance and she found herself staring into his eyes, feeling suddenly quite exposed. That blue gaze was bright and intense, the irises of his eyes putting her in mind of a midday winter sky. 

She wanted him to take her,  _gods_ , she wanted to feel him inside her worse than she thought she had ever wanted anything in her life. When he did move she nearly forgot to breathe; she was so slick he had merely to adjust the angle of his entry and  _already_ - 

Aurelia inhaled, breath shallow and trembling, waiting for him to finish that thrust, to ease his way into her, to bottom out- and he didn’t. Upon his withdrawal he teased at her entrance, lazily rocking his hips to grind against her - leaving her empty and twitching, the promise of relief well and truly withheld. She felt every ilm of him from tip to base with each movement he made. If his intent was to remind her she was at his mercy, he had succeeded.

Her renewed frustration manifested itself in an angry growl. 

_“Godsdamn it, Scaeva!”_

“You,” he breathed against her lips, “did not yield.”

“What?”

“Yield and you’ll get what you want." 

He was  _smirking_. Smug shite, he knew he’d won. "Oh for the  _love_ of-”

“Those are my terms, _eikon-slayer_. The choice is yours.” The head of his cock, heavy and wet, teased at her before he withdrew _again_. Up, back down again only to linger in that hollow before repeating the same maddening motion, awaiting her response. “Do you yield?”

“I-”

“Do you yield?” he repeated. The patient tone of those words belied the heat that lingered in his gaze. He was near his limit- and she was well past hers. 

 _“Seven hells,"_ her breath stuttered in her lungs with helpless surrender, fingers snarling in handfuls of summer-dry earth and overgrown grass and wild lavender, “ _yes_ , I yi-”

With one flex of powerful hips, he surged forward and hilted himself. Aurelia cried out, the thread of that plea lost in heat and pressure and pleasure. Any other time that thrust might have been painful but there was the slightest breath of a burn and that was all; she was far too wet for aught else. 

His mouth met hers in a light and absurdly chaste kiss, one she returned with an eagerness that almost embarrassed her, fingers digging into his shoulders. She waited, bemused, as he lifted his mouth away from hers to kiss the tip of her nose, then each eyelid, then the spot just below her third eye. She wasn’t sure what to make of his brief tenderness and her mind was too lust-addled to ponder it beyond surface speculation. He canted his hips forward, pressing his hands against the backs of her legs to better align himself, and as he did she felt the adjustment of his angle within. She groaned and her thighs trembled under his touch but she didn’t protest. 

“Alright?” he murmured. There was just a hint of an edge to his voice, a lust-riddled roughness that sent a small thrill down her spine. She responded by flexing to clench hard around the fullness inside her and watched something very much like pain twist his features.  _“Aurelia-”_

“I’m fine,” she whispered. She’d got what she wanted: his utterance of her name, the closest to a plea she knew he’d grant- at least for now. Releasing her tight grip on the grass, she touched his flushed cheek, damp with sweat, and gently tucked a stray lock of his mussed hair behind one ear. “Go on.”

Nero tilted his chin just so to bestow a kiss upon her palm. The stubble along his jaw scratched and tickled against her fingertips. He was smiling down at her, a strange sort of smile she wasn’t entirely certain how to take.

Then he started to move, in measured, firm thrusts that left her breathless, unable to do aught but moan. He had her pinned so securely in place that she could get no leverage unless it was to arch her back to grind into him each time his hips pressed against hers. The slide and the friction, the way he filled her over and over, left her mindless and uncaring of anyone that might chance to walk past the gate and see them, and the sounds of celebration faded into background static. 

She was drowning in pleasure, surrounded by the harsh gasps his movements wrenched from her throat and the soft sounds he made in her ear each time he buried himself inside her. His lips traced heated lines along her jaw, her throat, her ears. For those few blessed minutes, Ala Mhigo might as well have not existed.  _Eorzea_ barely mattered. Aurelia buried her face in his neck, tried to resist the urge to sink her teeth into the sensitive flesh at the juncture of his collarbone. She could feel her hand gathering at the curls on his nape, tugging at them with each of his movements, his breathing hot and ragged and-   

“Close,” she barely managed the word, half-sobbed it between gasps. She felt the telltale surge of heat and the spark of sensitivity at her core and knew it for what it was, pressure building towards release. Her ankles locked about his hips, and there was the warmth of his hand resting on her belly, just below her navel, then- “Gods, Nero, right  _there_ -”

The insistent roll of his thumb over her coupled with the deep angle of his thrusts was enough to send her over, and this time she  _did_ bite, her teeth clamping down hard on muscle and flesh to muffle her cry. He let out a sharp and startled hiss and flinched beneath her mouth, but it didn’t hurt him enough to keep him from riding out her climax. She clung to him as he kept moving, fucking her hard and fast now, chasing his own release now that he’d seen to hers: thrusts segueing into something arrhythmic and swift and shallow, punctuated by his gasping in her ear. 

She whispered to him in her turn, soft nonsense murmurs with her fingers still braced in a handful of sweat-damp blond curls, relishing his gradual loss of control and the tremor in his voice and the increasing desperation in the roll of his hips as he took his pleasure. After a few moments and a final thrust so brutal she knew they’d both bruise he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck with a deep and wrenching groan. 

He exhaled, his breath warm against her neck, and his weight relaxed carefully into the cradle of her hips - but his thumb did not stop its movements between her legs, and it was a matter of moments before she found herself flying again with a low and shaking moan. The intense radiating warmth of that second climax was much slower and sweeter with skilled fingers coaxing it from her, prolonging it until she could no longer bear even the gentlest of caresses and had to gasp in his ear for him to stop. 

They lay in close silence, their ragged breathing the only sound between them. 

Aurelia let her cheek rest against his and lost herself in afterglow, not yet willing to speak. There was the hammering of her heart in her ears and everything else below, wet heat and fullness and the lingering memory of acute pleasure; her veins felt as if they had been emptied of blood and filled with warm honey. 

Nero muttered something she didn’t catch, his lips dragging against her skin. 

“Hm?”

“Need up.”

“What?” She blinked. Her fingers were still idly drifting through the curls at his nape, still petting him. “Did I do someth-”

“No, nothing you’ve done. Just a leg cramp.” His soft sigh chuffed into her hair, the breath as warm as the rest of him, and then a rumble in her ear before he kissed it: “My blasted ankle’s gone numb." 

Aurelia laughed.

With a soft grunt he shifted his weight and rolled carefully onto his back. The slick emptiness left behind made her wince, as did the dull and slightly burning ache that now followed, the incipient soreness that came of a vigorous coupling after long celibacy.

Tilting her chin to one side, she studied him, or what she could see of him in the dim light. He had roused himself to a half-sitting position and massaged his calf with a pained grimace, but once he felt her gaze upon him he returned it with a smile and flexed his leg a few times before returning to the ground beside her.

"You are a vision,” he murmured. 

“Covered in sweat? Aye, I imagine so.”

That earned her one of his saucy little grins before he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and tugged her fully into his embrace.  

She laid her head against Nero’s still-heaving chest. His heart was pounding away, a strong and steady thumping beneath her ear, and she found the warmth of his hand on her shoulder comforting. After a moment or two his fingers drifted into her hair and tugged sweaty tangles of honey blonde away from her nape, and Aurelia let out a soft and contented sigh. 

Hells, she could fall asleep right here, just like this. And right now, sleep sounded so very tempting. Her eyes fell shut as she let herself drift, very much on the verge of dozing off in his arms. They’d have to dress and decide where to go and what to do next, she knew that. The others were going to come looking for her eventually. 

But oh, what a  _wonder_ it was: basking in the echo of a wholly mortal rapture with no interruptions forthcoming and not a care in the world. She had needed  _exactly_ this, whether Nero had planned it or not. 

Meanwhile, the engineer had found the sore spot on his neck where she’d bitten him. He was rubbing tentatively at it, wincing. 

“ _Really_ , sweetling, I’m aware that I’m quite the tumble-”

“And as self-deprecating as ever, I see.”

“-but you didn’t have to be  _this_ rough. That’s going to leave a mark for days. Are you certain you’re not actually half-baras?”

Aurelia opened her eyes, scoffed, and swatted lightly at the thick curls on his head, wet and tousled and-

“…is that  _grass_ in your hair?”

“We  _did_ just swive in your old backyard. I should think the stray bit of nature in one’s locks would be part and parcel. Speaking of which…” He reached over and plucked a blade of ryegrass from a tangle it had found behind her ear. “You appear to have picked up a few hangers-on yourself.”

“What on- ah shite, Scaeva,” she said, but there was no heat in it, not with the soft and helpless laugh that accompanied the epithet. “We look like we just rolled out of a haystack. The entire city’s going to know what we’ve been about.”

“Assuming they would care if they noticed at all. I’d wager most of Ala Mhigo’s likely got up to the same business tonight, so let them judge if they like.” One of those fluffy brows quirked upwards. “…Unless you’re having a touch of buyer’s remorse?”

“ _Hells_ no,” she said without a single hint of hesitation, and this time it was Nero’s turn to laugh. 

He started to help her pluck the stray pieces of grass from her hair as she did the same for him. She couldn’t help but giggle at some of the stranger places where the blades had stuck to skin, and he was chuckling softly in his turn. As time passed the grass-plucking turned to much softer touches, which turned  _back_ into kissing, and finally, Aurelia found the willpower to tangle her fingers in his hair and drag his mouth away from her breasts.

 _“Stop,”_  she laughed, somewhat breathlessly. “Look, we’ve got to  _at_   _least_ manage to get our clothes back on. Otherwise we’ll have to do this all over again in another quarter-bell.”

“I would say ‘there are worse ways to pass the time’ but this damned Gyr Abanian soil is hard as rock. Absolute murder on the knees.” Nero’s answering grin was appropriately devious, his teeth flashing in the moonlight. “What say you we procure a more comfortable - and private - venue?”

Aurelia perked up at this prospect.

“….One with a nice hot bath, I hope?” A good bath and a proper bed - not a sponge-down and a hard cot in a Resistance pavilion - sounded  _lovely_.

“Naturally.” He reached for the bottle of Viandja, amazingly undisturbed for all that it had remained in such close proximity. “Finish off the rest of this wine while we’re at it?”

She found herself grinning back. “Naturally.”

Zenos yae Galvus had been wrong. She  _wasn’t_ anything like him, not really, whether she could match his strange strength on the battlefield or not. She wasn’t a savage predator to be hunted for his amusement, nor a pet to be kept, nor even a fearless automaton to play hero only to be shoved into a closet when it was inconvenient.

Not a beast nor a hero. Just a woman. Just herself. And she was immensely grateful to her friend for the reminder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you'd like to yell at me for my crimes against writing or simply meet like-minded people who love reading and/or writing stories about their adventures in hydaelyn, please feel free to join our book club! note: thirst for one (1) rat man optional. https://discord.gg/FB8hqkD


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